Politics, Economics, Culture, and Theology with a Biblical Viewpoint

Archive for the category “Drug Legalization”

One of the problems with the discussions of “Libertarian Anarchism” is that the participants in the discussion do not know that

There have been functional societies lacking a state.

These societies have never been libertarian.

You can read about one such stateless society in David (yes, the son of Milton) Friedman’s essay on the economics of Medieval Iceland, “Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case.” After you do so, you might then have “new eyes” to use to read the book of Judges over again. Judges is another society that, before Saul, had no state, unless the religious obligation to support the Tabernacle could be considered that organization. Read more…

Whether or not Christians agree with Macias on legalizing drugs, many will assume that the simple point is whether or not “the government” (conceived of as a monolithic entity rather than as many people with many different centers of power and differing interests) is “against” drugs and therefore prohibits them. But what if we take a moment and look at the world as it actually is? Read more…

This past week alone I’ve seen two attempts by mainstream conservative pundits to stigmatize liberty by portraying it as some obscure liberal ideal. It goes like this: somehow liberty is great, but the drug stuff takes it too far. They suppose that freedom is a value that must be reined in by the government, because if we go too far with that dangerous idea – like in the area of drugs – society could be negatively affected if the state stopped regulating certain drug commerce. That there would be no negative effect on society if the state regulated drug commerce, is presumed. Read more…

This is critical. The GOP Establishment is going to claim that Todd Akin is the reason Romney was defeated. We have to point out that Obama shifted into a Pansexual Leftist campaign, and Romney refused to fight on the other side. The only mention of abortion I remember coming out of his campaign was an ad assuring voters he did believe that kids conceived by rape could be legally killed.

Homosexual Marriage

Fight continues. I expect Romney to blame the Religious Right for making too much of this issue.

Drone Homicides

Obama now owns these for another four years. That gives Christians who are awake time to show how readily the use of drones is appropriate to a commander-in-chief who thinks babies should be killed if they survive abortions.

Nation-building

If it can be done overseas, then it can be done here. Obama has explicitly emphasized this point, and owned it. We need to make sure the reasoning sticks. The objective should be a Republican President in 2016 who repudiates totalitarian, coercive social engineering on every continent, not just on North America.

Financing Terrorists to Induce Regime Change

Obama has effectively armed and financed Al Qaeda or similar groups in Libya and Syria. If Romney had won the Presidency, he would have owned this policy. But with Obama as the leader, we have a chance, again, to show how much more appropriate it is for a Marxist to export violent revolution and chaos rather than a professed “conservative.”

National Security State/TSA Groping Regime

Again, Obama now owns all of this. Let’s use him to get conservatism back on track with real civil rights.

Drug War

We have four years to oppose prohibition and SWAT Teams, which are now Democrat property.

Economic Policy/Corruptocracy

We need to get people to realize how much Obama followed Bush’s playbook on the economy and Wall Street.

Crimes

I wish God had granted us the Senate. But if we can really expose and investigate “Fast and Furious” and Benghazigate, we can hopefully paralyze the president.

This is off the top of my head. What else should we do? Please make some suggestions or corrections to my ideas in the comments.

With the success of Portugal’s decriminalization, scholars have now begun to examine why it worked. As expected, some show skepticism. Here are two central perspectives:

Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Maryland, like Kleiman, is skeptical. He conceded in a presentation at the Cato Institute that “it’s fair to say that decriminalization in Portugal has met its central goal. Drug use did not rise.” However, he notes that Portugal is a small country and that the cyclical nature of drug epidemics — which tends to occur no matter what policies are in place — may account for the declines in heroin use and deaths.

The Cato report’s author, Greenwald, hews to the first point: that the data shows that decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Since that is what concerns the public and policymakers most about decriminalization, he says, “that is the central concession that will transform the debate.”